A warm comforting blanket of familiarity.

World: The world building has always been fantastic, Jacques is a master of painting word pictures that are vibrant and beautiful and lush. The piece of the world we see this time with the slaves and the north is pretty slightly a little bit different from the rest of the Redwall world so it’s a nice little welcome. Reading Redwall books is like coming home, you know that mum is making roast chicken for dinner and dad is in the garage fixing his car, it’s expected and familiar.

Story: The story here is exactly what you would expect from a Jacques book, it’s an adventure, it’s a battle between good and evil where the lines of right and wrong are very clearly drawn. This book has established tropes and clichés, rats are always evil, rabbits are always gluttonous, and Moles always speak as Jacques writes them. If you are okay with the established norm of Redwall then this book is for you, it does nothing new and it pushes no boundaries. The story has a little slight new flavor to it with the slave storyline and also the female protagonist but it’s the same old same old. Critics will say it’s biased and simple in it’s look at the world but hey it’s a child’s book and I love it cause I grew up with it, irks and all. There is the high adventure, the songs, the food, the legends and lore, it’s all there and it’s beautiful.

Characters: Triss is a fun character, she falls into the established ‘hero’ archetype and so do the rest of the characters in Redwall. There is the wise mouse, there is the wayward Badger, the gluttonous hare, it’s all there and their name changes and slight character changes make this a new book. It’s here and it’s the same.

A same old same old book that if you love it, you love it. If no, then this book won’t change your thoughts.

Onward to the next book!

I am quite ambiguous about Brian Jacques triss, its a little difficult to make out what the characters are saying with there Scottish accents and my attention drifted off a bit at times,but I love the charm this series has, even though it at times can be hard to understand,which lands it at three stars.

This is the best Redwall book.

I was genuinely satisfied at the ending.

This was an old favorite that came to mind while reading the Odyssey. Brian Jacques is far from perfect— heavy stereotyping, which simplifies some characters a bit, along with some winks and nods along with most of the jokes— but he's a brilliant storyteller with a vivid way of putting forth his imagination.

As a kid, I read almost every novel in the Redwall series - they were one of my favorite escapes. So when I stumbled on this one, which I hadn’t read, at a second-hand store I was excited.

The world Jacques creates sucks you in. The characteristics of the animals, the clever poetry/songs, the real world struggles of good v evil, life and death, plus the descriptions of food. It’s all so great.

I gave this only 3 stars not because I didn’t enjoy it - if you like his books definitely give this a try. However, this one had fewer creative struggles, which I missed. The riddles they need to solve to answer questions or uncover a lost history - there was only one in this book.

3.5/5

5 stars. Oh, man, I loved this. And I think it was kind of unique for a Redwall story, too—with 2 slaves escaping an island kingdom, Redwall dwellers trying to find Brockhall, and the Badger + a hare running away from Salamandastron with a sailor otter… only for everyone to meet up in the end in some very unexpected ways.

Warrior maidens are never as much my fav as male warriors in the best of times—but Triss was particularly flat to me. Shogg was far more the hero than she was. I LOVED SHOGG AND WILL NEVER BE OKAY WITH HIS ENDING. Skipper was another fav <3 I think Scarum was my least favourite of the hares so far—all glutton and bragger, and very little courage or skill, as most hares are—he’s really awful—but Sagax was pretty cool. Also, Plugg was probably my favourite vermin/villain so far. He was hilarious. XD And the running gag with his tail was so fun!

The plot was awesome, though. I do feel like there was info missing about the riddle and all—because how on earth did the rats/ferrets get that done in the time they were there??—but minus that I really enjoyed each of the three storylines and I SCREAMED when I realized where they merged—because I somehow didn’t realize they were so close to Mossflower! Everything was wonderful until the Final Epic Showdown Between the Evil and the Good, which was WAY too fast-paced imo. I felt really cheated out of that. But although the ending was very different, done entirely in epistolary form, it was pretty unique and cool. And I loved S + K’s romance. So cute.

So yeah. I loved this a lot. And it made me cry. :)

Did Brian Jacques have a garden that was ravaged by rabbits?

Good lord, it seems with every Redwall book I've read, the rabbits have continually been getting more and more food obsessed, to the point where they not only eat absurd amounts of food, but also eat everyone else's food, steal it from other people, and ruin entire events and even villages because they just NEEEEEED food so much. In Triss, Bescarum does exactly that, and even writes a letter at the end essentially scolding everyone for starving him. It was a really weird, distracting theme throughout this whole book, and as I look back, that is mainly the singular feature I remember most about it.

The rest of the book isn't horrible, but it essentially adopts Brian's typical formula. Personally, I couldn't really get into this one from the beginning, as it starts with two different protagonists that take off on their 'adventures' without you getting to know them at all, or in one of their cases, not even a very good reason for leaving. And for the entire book, you essentially follow them in a prolonged boat chase that doesn't have many memorable moments aside from the aforementioned rabbit causing issues.

The villain on the Redwall side - three snakes tied together by a mace, their tails apparently eternally rotting so badly they leave a cloud of stink around them - was poorly executed and didn't have much purpose, as the Redwallers essentially cause the issue by insisting they get into Brockhall, which I thought was going to be mysterious and amazing (but wasn't). Triss' villains were just mean, and often bumbling or drunk. They didn't actually accomplish anything.

The ending, too, was strange, as after everything is summed up, you're then presented with a stack of letters and journal entries, revealing that, hey, you're going out on another adventure, freeing a bunch of slaves, and then coming all the way back to where the book ended.

For me, a little confusing and stale. On to Loamhedge!

delightful books, always a new twist--also you have to love all the names the author comes up with for his various characters and of course the food!

Definitely not Mr. Jacques' best work, but an entertaining read overall. I didn't feel the emotional connect with most of the characters, as there was such a large cast list that I didn't feel like anyone got enough page time to really build that connection. Triss' connection to Martin seemed a lot like everything else in the book, like it was crammed into the story too quickly. Ultimately I felt as though this book should've had another 200 pages or so to adequately cover all the characters and storylines that Mr. Jacques had going.

The ending feels really cheap and rushed and the one good character who dies does so in such a way that I'm left without the dramatic sense of the depth of their passing and within three pages his friends are laughing and joking around as if they've forgotten a close friend has just died. The bad guys all die so quickly and without any real fight that it's rather dissatisfying when everything is said and done. The epilogue wraps up what should've been another 100 pages of narrative in about 20 pages, detailing the fulfillment of the titular character's promises made at the first of the story and the overall effect is very unfulfilling as we watch the majority of the tension in the story get swept under the rug with a quick second-hand account of the events that finish off the story (and a surprise romance that's ham-fistedly jammed into the narrative within the last 7 pages that feels so contrived as to be unbelievable). The whole last 100 pages of the book I was wondering how Mr. Jacques was going to be able to tie everything together and whether or not he'd be able to pull it off convincingly. Being a high school teacher, I give the book itself a solid B-, but the conclusion was so lackluster and rushed that it would pull the whole book down to a C- if I were grading this as an assignment.

The really frustrating part is that there is the usual set of adventures at the beginning of the story that really don't add to anything in the story itself (i.e. the shark that Scarum catches, the lizards in the sand, Wulfo and the Island of Peace, the pinecone slinging squirrels) all of these things were nice flavor, and they added to the atmosphere of the story, but nothing else came of them and all they did was take up a little bit of story time. In the end it would've been far more interesting, I feel, if the climax had had more to do with Riftan and the freeing of the slaves. The three headed adder was a cool idea, but it was introduced so late in the story that it didn't get the development it needed, there was no scary mystique that surrounded this snake as say Asmodeus from the original book. There were so many things that didn't add to the overall story as much as they could have that distracted from those things that really did relate to the core story that in the end we are left with a rushed and fragmented story with some staggering plot holes at some points.

In the end, it is a nice return to a comfortable world, but it doesn't rank among the higher versions of Mr. Jacques' better works.

This book is about a swordmaid named Triss. Once held as a slave in an place known as Riftgard, she escaped with some friends and vowed to return to free others confine in the place forced to work for a cruel king for life. The daughter of the king Agranu pursues her relentlessly. On the way. Trisscar met new friends and found waht she really was: a warrior. She was later involved in a quest to rediscover Brockhall the great home of the badgers. There, they fought three dreadful snakes and the fighters of Riftgard. When the Riftgard forces were defeated, The daughter Kurda of Agranu challenged Triss and was killed. Finally, Triss with some warriors journeyed back to Riftgrad to destroy all the vermin and free the slaves.

There is this same theme always with a new one. The latest lesson is keep your promises. This is the only way you could fulfill your death companions wish. Sometimes when doing this, you become a better person and also know some of life's morals.

This was pure nostalgia, no notes, pure joy to relive my childhood in Mossflower country!